They called it Bush’s folly, a lost cause, even the worst foreign policy mistake in US history. “Even now, there are those who cannot bring themselves to utter the words ‘victory’ and ‘Iraq’ in the same sentence,” writes Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe. “But six years after the war began, it is ending in victory.”
One recent ABC report marveled at the “streets without fear.” Combat deaths are at a 6-year low. Nouri al-Maliki has formed an alliance with a Sunni, proving Iraq’s democracy can transcend sectarian divides. Granted, Iraq is no "Jeffersonian republic," Jacoby writes. "But over the past six years it has been transformed from one of the most brutal tyrannies on earth to an example of democratic pluralism in the heart of the Arab world." (More Iraq war stories.)